People v. Zackowitz

254 N.Y. 192, 172 N.E. 466 (1930)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Four young men were repairing an automobile on a Brooklyn street. D's wife walked by on the opposite side. One of the men insulted her. When D arrived, he found his wife in tears. He was told she had been insulted. D stepped across the street and upbraided the offenders with words of coarse profanity. D said, 'if they did not get out of there in five minutes, he would come back and bump them all off.' D was drunk because he had been drinking at a dance. D eventually got his wife to tell him what was said to her. One of the men had asked her to lie with him and had offered her two dollars. Enraged again, D went back to the scene of the insult and found the young men. D told the police he had armed himself at the apartment with a twenty-five-caliber automatic pistol. In his testimony at the trial, he said that this pistol had been in his pocket all evening. D fought with them. D kicked Coppola in the stomach. Coppola went for him with a wrench. D used the pistol on him and killed him. D then walked away and at the corner met his wife who had followed him from the home. On the way to Manhattan in a taxicab, D threw his pistol into the river. He was arrested on January 7, 1930, about two months following the crime. The issue at trial was whether the killing was premeditated. At the opening of the trial, P began an assault on D and painted him as someone with an evil character. Evidence showed that D kept three pistols and a tear-gas gun in his apartment, but the police could not find the gun that killed Coppola. P concentrated on the theory that D was a dangerous person because he kept guns at his home and that the mere possession of a weapon characterized D as a desperate type of criminal. D appealed on the ground that the evidence of D's character should not have been admitted.